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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Sixteen months after I moved to Ankara, one of the leading literary figures of Turkey, Yashar Kemal, died. Kemal was a polarizing force of Turkish literature: charismatic and beloved by generations who came up in his wake, he was also a radical firebrand, a constant thorn in the government’s side. For these reasons, I’d long had his seminal novel Memed, my Hawk, on my radar – what could inspire so many, I wondered, but scare those in power? I had a surprising amount of trouble finding it in English here in Turkey until a few months after his death, on a trip to Istanbul, where I found a copy in a bookstore that caters to foreigners. Nearby, a Turkish bookstore had Kemal’s image on a three-story banner clinging to its side, andit was inhis shadow I walked home.

As I cracked Memed, my Hawk open in my AirBnB flat I wasn’t sure I’d be able to relate to a sixty year old Turkish masterwork. There I was, a stolid American of some privilege, embedded in modern Turkey, hundreds of miles and decades removed from the peasants the book jacket described. What could it say to me? An early passage describing the thistle fields of the eastern Taurus mountains seemed an ambiguous portent: “Thistles,” Kemal tells us, “generally grow in soil which is neither good nor bad but has been neglected.” And “They sprout so thick, so close together, that a snake would not be able to slip through them.” A curious start, but no matter. I soldiered on.

And after all this thistle business, I was somewhat surprised to discover that Memed, my Hawk is a swashbuckling, page-turning, adventure story chock-full of noble peasants and evil villains. It’s the story of a young boy named Memed who grows up oppressed and abused by the landlord of his village, Abdi Agha. Memed runs away (through the thistle fields, naturally), only to be recaptured and abused further. Eventually he falls in love with the Agha’s niece, which leads to further tragedy, and he must run to the hills to join a band of brigands, one of whom, Mad Durdu, steals “even the underpants” of his victims. Much of the rest of the book is Memed’s long quest to avenge himself against the evil, exploitive landlord, be reunited with his love interest, and (almost coincidentally), free the peasants from their oppressive yoke. There are gunfights, noble sacrifices, and tragic minor characters like Memed’s loyal right-hand man Jabbar, and the conflicted but good-hearted tracker, Lame Ali.

I was pleasantly surprised, then engrossed. I consider myself a fairly literary reader, but a great chunk of my soul is dedicated to cheap thrills from old school pulp: John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammet, Patricia Highsmith. The idea that Turkey of the mid-twentieth century had tastes similar to the USA, with clear distinctions of good and evil, and was prone to idealize a troubled past, made me feel connected to my adopted country in a new, comforting way. Could it be I’d found a spiritual cousin to the dozens of noble outlaw myths from Zorro and Robin Hood to Australia’s Kelley Gang and ballads of American gunfighters? Sure I had.

The early chapters of Memed, my Hawk adhere closely to a timeless mythology where technology is limited to guns and plows pulled by oxen. Memed’s first visit to a city is related in fairy-tale language to describe glittering windows of glass and the magic of paved roads:

“Near these was a big tiled building and beyond it lay the whole town, like a toy city, with its roofs of shiny corrugated iron, its whitewashed roofed terraces, and its red tiles. Memed and Mustafa stared at this site, their eyes wide with astonishment. How white it all was! How many houses there were! They couldn’t take their eyes off it.

“Crossing the Boklu stream, they entered the town. The windows shone in the sunlight. Thousands of shiny panes, like crystal palaces, just as Dursun had said. A town for fairy kings, with palaces.” (p. 60)

But then complications set in. By the book’s third act, the evil Agha has sought the help of an equally corrupt government stooge, and we learn about the fledgling government in Ankara, that the brigands crowding the hills are the remainders of the troops that rallied to fight the French and English eager to divide the remains of the Ottoman Empire amongst themselves, only to be foiled by the great Ataturk. Suddenly we’re in a real time and place. And it is a political world after all, even if Memed himself doesn’t care much about the national government.

Kemal would claim his whole life that he was simply a bard, a tale-teller, a link in a chain of storytellers running from the dim past to the sketchy future. But his claims of being apolitical seem at best disingenuous, however, since by 1952, when he wrote Memed, my Hawk, Kemal had been steeped in political intrigue for years. His father was, apparently, a feudal landlord, and was murdered in a mosque while five-year old Kemal watched; Kemal himself lost an eye in the incident. And as a teenager, Kemal would be arrested for trying to unionize tractor drivers in southern Anatolia.

How could such an attitude not be reflected in his writing? The thistles in the field were not merely for local flavor; peasants everywhere face thistles of all kinds, from harsh overlords to military dictatorships to corrupt oligarchs. Life is a hardship to be endured until finally Memed tells the peasants: burn down the thistles, then sow your field. Veiled in metaphor or not, this wasn’t a message a government could tolerate without reprisal, even from a beloved author and perennial Nobel prize short-lister. His outspoken nature, socialist leanings and minority status - he was a Kurd in a land ruled by Turks - would ultimately, in 1995, earn him a 20-month suspended jail sentence for speaking out on Turkey’s continued harsh treatment of its minorities.

A few months after reading Memed, my Hawk, I had the chance to visit the Eastern Taurus mountains, not far from Kemal’s birthplace and the fictional Taurus mountains of Memed’s world. As we left the airport and the driver steered our car up into the rugged foothills, I had an eerie feeling of deja vu: It was all as Yashar Kemal had described. The stony fields covered in thistle patches, the high canted stratas of crumbling dusty stone, and there, along the cliffs above the treacherous scree and shrubs: caves, dark holes where a brigand could hide out while gendarmes camped on the valley floor.

It was indeed a harsh landscape; in olden times you would need harsh sensibilities to survive it. I was used to the sprawling malls and sterile towers of Ankara, and was energized in this world of Yashar Kemal that still somehow existed. The geography he had embodied still teemed with goatherds, cows, and peasants resolved to the hardness of life but still with open hearts (and guesthouses) for outsiders. And it was there, where literature meets landscape, that I felt most connected to Memed, and to an Anatolian heartland most would assume has vanished.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Well it's that time of year again, when the good folks over at The Morning News go and make a mockery of book reviews, literary awards, book club picks, and anyone vain enough to think one book is objectively better than any other book. It's the Morning News Tournament of Books, where sixteen books of Proven Literary Merit are seeded into a single-elimination bracket, and chosen to advance by an illuminating, often infuriating, set of esteemed judges chosen from all walks of life: Book reviewers, novelists, musicians, bloggers, and the occasional escaped mental patient. Furious and often hilariously pointless debates ensue.

I had sort of an off-year for current fiction; of the field I have read only three books, marked with an asterisk. All odds are therefore set by a complex algorithm derived from GoodReads chatter, selected reviews, gut-feelings, and past lunacy. There are a few reliable guideposts: short story collections do horribly, award winners do better than you'd think, plucky underdogs almost always get their come-uppance, and the only winners are the commentariate, who enliven all festivities with their insights, which are often better than the judges but in no way affect the outcome of the tournament, I think.

Other things to note: There doesn't seem to be an oddball from a weird category this year. No box-of-poems, no graphic novel, no YA angst machine. Also, no play-in round!

The Booker Prize winner, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, got a curious pass this year. Not only would it have brought Oceania further into the mix (Evie Wyld is also Australian), but it could have been a nice matchup with David Klay's war-based collection of stories.

So, in order of alphabet (author's last name) here are my uninformed rundowns of the 16 entrants and my grebmaR-certified odds for the author to have barnyard fowl in their yard (or dinner plate) come April.

Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball
An oddball, Kafka-esque noir mystery set in Japan, I can see this novel having some appeal, but don't see it going deep into the tourney. The ideal reader will be a Zenn-diagram intersection of readers fascinated by: 1) Mysterious unknowable Japan 2) Kafka-esque dysphoria, and 3) Compulsive meditators on the nature of Truth. The odds of this book getting that reader four times in a row are approximately 100-1

A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall by Will Chancellor -
Billed on Goodreads as a cross between The Art of Fielding and The Flamethrowers, ABMSST looks high-concept to death: A 7-foot, one-eyed former athlete travels to Berlin to be an Artist; his father tries to become a great intellectual. That's a lot of pretenses, and when this novel meets a reviewer more interested in meat-and-potatoes Normal Rockwell than foie-gras meets faux Warhol, potential is high for an undignified exit. 50-1.

* All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A beautifully written novel that plumbs the fathomless depths of World War II. It's about a blind girl struggling to survive in a beseiged French city, and a young radio enthusiast whose talents are exploited by everyone's favorite unforgivable inhuman bastards, German Nazis. I loved this book, and so did a lot of people - it's 4.24 GoodReads ranking puts it second on the ToB list. On the other hand, books I love never do well in the ToB. 10-1

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
The third part of an Italian cross-generational romance, TWLaTWS seems again to have limited appeal, though with its GoodReads score of 4.3 (with far fewer votes, which tends to skew books higher), it is well loved by those who did read it. I can't see that being the third part of a trilogy and having five pages of character biographies at the beginning, and an exposition-heavy first chapter (I read a kindle sample) can possibly be overcome, but stranger things have happened when the Rooster begins to crow. 100-1

* An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
(GR 4.16) A pre-tournament favorite if only for Roxane Gay's towering status in the blogosphere and literati zeitgeist. A chronicle of a kidnapped Haitian heiress who endures rape and torment for 13 days, and the just as traumatic aftermath, for many readers AUS was the book of the year. An important book and a deep contender, definitely, though any judge coming at this from outside the hype machine may take it down for any number of reasons, which may include it being unrelentingly grim, rhetorically repetitive, and a heartbreakingly frustrating read. 8-1

Wittgenstein Jr by Lars Iyer
A melancholic, tormented philosopher, his ennui-ridden Oxford students, this novel of the life of the minds seems like a sleeper targeted, once again, to a very narrow demographic. Given that the average Goodreads score is 3.37, the lowest in the field, I don't see Iyer advancing far unless he meets a series of like-minded philosophy majors in the judges chambers. Or, as Linda summed up on her 1-star Goodreads review: "ugh. If you did not read Philosophy or go to Cambridge, do not read this book." 150-1

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
I feel like this is going to be the dark horse of the tourney, and not just because the author has ties to my home state, Minnesota (Go Gophers!). Anything combining murder and Bob Marley is okay by me. This one could also pair up nicely with Roxane Gay - two novels of the violent legacy of Caribbean nations. 15-1.

Redeployment by Phil Klay
I read one of the stories in this collection, and it was wonderful. Klay comes from the tough-guy sentimental school, the storied, battle-scarred genre of war-and-its aftermath where men silently go about the miserable, violent job of being a Man. Paired with Roxane Gay's novel, and at the hands of the right judge, we could see an epic evaluation of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome viewed through geopolitics and gender issues. I would love to see that. Downsides include short story collections natural tendency to sag against the taut narratives of a single volume novel, so I'm putting the odds at 15-1 on winning the tournament, and 10,000-1 on seeing that insightful conversation of violence, gender, and geopolitics.

* Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Another critical darling. Station Eleven takes literary chops at a shopworn genre cliche, in this case a postapocalyptic America in which a caravan of Shakespearean actors are on the run from a Mad Prophet. The climax may be a little weak and the themes - Art and the Assholes who make it - a bit twee, and some may say the intricate plotting relies a bit too much on coincidence, but overall this is a fine, inspired piece of imagination, and will match up well against any contender in this strong field. 8-1

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
Perennial literati darling David Mitchell returns with another dense clockwork novel; I won't even attempt a plot synopsis. I have not read any Mitchell and intend to start one day; he strikes me as a Pynchonesque madman. Mitchell could become the ToB's second winner (He won for Cloud Atlas several years back). Drawbacks: Mitchell fatigue. 10-1

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Another book with a great hook: a mixed-race family in the 1970's experiences turmoil when their beloved daughter dies. There's no better set-up for exploring what America is or does or can be. If Ng executed even half of this premise, there's no reason for this not to be the upset special of the tournament. 15-1

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
A tender, moving portrait of a middle-class marriage. It's themes seem if not slighter when compared to the war-and-trauma heavy contenders elsewhere in the feed, then there seems to be a subtle lack of gravitas. It's always a strange matchup when a family potboiler goes up against a so-called Book for the Ages. Due to a perceived gravitas gap, I'm putting this book at 75-1

Adam by Ariel Schrag
A young boy goes off to college and masquerades as a trans to win the heart of the girl he loves. A brilliant combination of queer studies, 00's nostalgia, and the coming-of-age novel. This one feels wonderful, I love the idea of this farce from a former graphic novelist. Again, there's a gravitas gap at play, but there are enough intangibles to make this novel the little horse that could. Then again, in the Rooster, the big boys and girls tend to crush delicate quirky flowers of a book like Adam. 30-1

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
A period piece with a fairly conventional premise, The Paying Guests is probably the darkest horse in this race. It's 1920's London, and a down-on-their luck family takes in borders who according to the weirdly vague synopsis will shake up their lives in unexpected ways. It's probably better than the weak synopsis makes it out to be - are the boarders ghosts? anarchists? theater people? - but with the heavy hitters in this year's field I'm afraid The Paying Guests will be evicted early. 100-1

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Gravitas, Gravitas, Gravitas. An eco-thriller set in some anarchic eco-disaster future, Annihilation probes the dark regions of Area X, where teams of scientists enter and, if they return at all, come back scarred and transformed. Look for a matchup with the field's other post-apocalyptic potboiler Station Eleven for a discussion on how different two visions of a nasty future can be. I'm giving Annihilation long odds based on it being the first of a trilogy and the always elusive but fairly predictable 'this-is-just-not-for-me' factor. 25-1

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
Moody atmospherics on a haunted island, you say? A woman sheepherder with mysterious scars? Foxes, sheep, and wind-battered vistas? Interesting... Again, the synopsis is light on details - apparently sheep-herder Jake Whyte has a Haunted Past - but there's a likeable elegance to the prose I sampled. And this book was selected for the field by a small, independent bookstore in Glen Elyn, Illinois as their most-hand-sold book of the year, so there has to be something brilliant lurking in the rain-swept highlands, right? Right? 30-1

* Books I've read as of 1-18-2015

Well, that's it. Please remember to keep all wagering on a gentlemanly level. I will post updates when the final pairings are posted in March. Till then, happy reading!

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Here is my Christmas gift to you all:Mistletoe Drone ... of DEATH!!!
Inspired by a true story

*** Mistletoe Drone Operator at TGI Friday’s was the best job this "kind-of-a-loner, kept to himself" could get.***

SCENE: TGI Fridays, interior. BARRY, pimpled and bitter, is dressed in TGI Friday's shirt and suspenders with lots of flair. His hair is lank and greasy, a sneer on his face. He holds the MISTLETOE DRONE controller and scans the restaurant. It’s filled with young couples in love, feeding each other french fries and sesame jack™ chicken strips.

BARRY (Voice-over): (Bitterly) Look at all you happy couples. Sitting there with your thai pork tacos, staring into each other’s eyes, longing to kiss. Here, I'll make you kiss!

He controls the MISTLETOE DRONE toward a SEXY COUPLE. It stops, its mistletoe payload directly over the WOMAN's head. The SEXY COUPLE looks up. WOMAN laughs, and MAN kisses her.

Friday, October 31, 2014

Subject: Hey, stranger!
I was on the 11C the other day, and smelled brimstone, and thought of you. Then I looked up and there you were, in the back, talking to some trashy blonde in a cheap Victoria’s Secret houndstooth. It was so weird! I wanted to say hi, but you were busy and I was too embarrassed, and then it was my stop.

I know, Gurlax, we had a wonderful night together in the woods of Lake Nokomis, and that I danced a pagan dance and promised my soul to you for all eternity and all, but I don’t know. Please don’t think me a tease. I was drunk and vulnerable, and going through a phase where I liked bad boys and naked worship of hell-mouth portal entities conjured from books best left unread. At first I was flattered: Gurlax the Defiler, known to all as Satan’s Consigliore! And Me! What are the odds? And you were sweet, really, with your tickly forked tongue and that trick you do with your tail. You were not at all the vicious creature of legend, and I defend you as much as I can whenever your name comes up.

But let’s be honest, Sweetie. I think you have issues with commitment. I think you are needier than you let on, and have a deep lonely void in your life that no amount of soul-devouring can ever fill. This endless need for conquest, and the inevitably petty unsolvable drama that ensues. I want you to know it was nothing you did, but only the by-product of who we are, residue of an outdated moral filter instilled in us by generations of religious inbreeding. Perhaps in another time or place…

And the truth is, I’m just not ready to commit to you, or to anyone, and may not be for a long long time. The prospect of giving myself completely to any one manifestation of a culture's mores re: sin and redemption, now or ever, terrifies me.

So: I’m sorry if I caused you any pain when I tricked you, using the souls of my roommate’s virginal teenage sisters as bait, into returning my soul to me under the ancient rules of the Codex Gigas. I still fondly recall your pitiful cries as I held you in the spell of the omnivus ring and held the iron of Flinx to your hooved feet until you relented, releasing my souls and the souls of my roommate’s sisters (Amanda’s in Bethel now, can you believe it?) back into our own custody – and yes, I believe you felt remorse in that moment, but only for that moment.

Such is life. So no, Gurlax, we can never be together. But, no hard feelings? I really wanted to catch up, but you looked busy, and I had Pilates, then dinner with Greg, my new guy, who’s in investment banking. I know, I know, investment bankers, demonic hellspawn, I sure do know how to pick ‘em, don’t I? (Ha ha) Okay. Hey, who was that girl you were talking to? She seems nice.

Monday, October 20, 2014

When DC/Warner announced their "road to 2020" superhero movie guide a few days ago, I noticed a glaring omission: Plastic Man. Why no Plastic Man?! Ant-man is getting a movie. And Guardians of the Galaxy made a star of a mutant raccoon. What is it about Plastic Man that the studio thinks America won't like? I for one think it's time.

As everyone knows, Plastic Man first appeared in Police Comics in 1941. He started life as petty criminal Eel O'Brian, who fell into a vat of acid that changed his body into a malleable, rubber-like substance. He was nursed back to health by a mystic order of monks, and pledged himself to a life of fighting crime.

For the first few issues, Plastic Man investigated crime rings from the inside as his original identity, Eel O'Brian, then foiled them as Plastic Man. He soon abandoned that ruse, and the plotlines went very very strange. One memorable issue saw Plas battling an undead brain placed in the body of a wheelchair-bound giant, who learned to walk on his hands and destroy villages.

Plas had no choice but to be swallowed, where he swelled up in the Giant's esophagus, thus strangling the monster, whose brain is still alive awaiting its chance to wreck vengeance on humanity. We are not kidding.

But the comic potential of a man who could shape himself into virtually anything eventually succumbed to the ridiculousness of that concept, and Plastic Man became more comic than heroic, as the covers show. Plas was something different, not quite superhero meta-commentary, but not wholly of the genre; he never fit in with the DC universe, much as they tried. He was perhaps, like Peanuts or Li'l Abner, too attuned to the sensibilities of his creator, Jack Cole, to be coherently integrated into other people's worlds.

Which is what makes him a tough sell. Plas is a niche guy in a mass market world. He saved women from phony curses and tracked down kidnapped atomic scientists. He never took himself so seriously as to save the whole damn world week after week; he was a lunch-bucket street-pounding beat cop superhero who happened to also be kind of batshit crazy.

Todays auteur directors of high-angst cookie-cutter mayhem wouldn't know what to do with an essentially self-mocking hero. Let's face it: there is no real imagination in popular culture these days. Today's Hollywood comic industry marches to a single drum: a grim pounding of grit and despair, of self-important sci-fi soap operatics and dimension saving, city crushing melees. Only the costumes change.

But that doesn't mean Plastic Man shouldn't be done. On the contrary, that means Plastic Man MUST be done. There has to be room for a jokey, impossible man on the silver screen. I think Plastic Man is the hero we need right now.

Okay, let's cast this sucker.

Plastic Man

Anarchic force of nature. Free-thinking crazy man whose heart stays on the side of justice. But he was once also the hard-boiled criminal Eel O'Brian, scourge of the underworld. Dark haired, with a strong chin and baffling white sunglasses, Plastic Man could be played by many people (and will require extensive CGI, of course). But I believe he requires a comedian at heart, and one with a deft touch and a surprising depth of humanity. Traditional leading men - Will Smith, Tom Hardy, Bradley Cooper - need not apply. We're going for fringe element cult status folks here. Let's burn through some obvious but past-their-prime choices first:

Bruce Campbell
It's a measure of how old I am that Army of Darkness era Bruce Campbell was the first name that came to mind. He's got the chin, he's got the hair, he's got the rogue-chaos personality. But Bruce isn't exactly a spring chicken. If this were a reboot of a Justice League going through a collective mid-life crisis, Bruce C might be our bet, but for a franchise starter, we need someone young and fresh.

Jim Carey
Twenty years ago this would have been a lock. (I am indeed very old.) But now we're in the Twitter era, and Jim Carey is dead to Hollywood. He'd have to be pried like gum from his reclusive mansion and cattle-prodded back to his Mask-era prime. This would be a direct-to-video disaster, twenty years too late.

Keanu Reeves

Dark hair, pointy chin, clueless persona, check check check. K-Rev was even considered for the role when the Wachowski Brothers developed a script. Wait, that happened? Yes, yes it did. Wearing the sunglasses wouldn't harm Reeves acting range at all, and Keanu's surfer/Bill and Ted vibe might give a cute twist to the character, but let's face it, Reeves might as well be as in-demand as Bela Legosi for today's millenials.

Which brings us to some contenders. I've used my mad photoshop skills to give you an idea of what they look like in the the Plas-shades.

David Tennant

About a year ago, Tennant was rumored to be in talks to play Plastic Man in the Justice League movie. And I can totally see it. Tenant's has range and talent. But as big a Tennant fan as I am (His Doctor Who incarnation is far superior to Matt Smith's dead-eyed quip machine. (And yeah. I went there.)), I don't see him being a low-life gangster.

Plus, he's British, and I'm kind of against Brits playing Americans. They wouldn't let any Americans into Harry Potter, why should they get to poach Superman, Spider-Man AND Plastic Man? This is our Bunker Hill, people.

Lastly, the best thing about Tennant is his incredibly expressive eyes, and being forced to wear white goggles the entire time would cripple his range. Still, it's an intriguing choice.

Steve Carrell

I'd love to do screen tests of all these actors, then do a YouTube supercut of them saying Plastic Man's iconic first line: "Great Guns! I'm stretching like a rubber band!" I think Carrell could nail that line. I think he could bring his Maxwell Smart sense of adventure to Plastic Man. He'd also lend some goofy nice-guy schmuck charm to the romantic subplot. And with the Oscar buzz generated by his recent turn as a sociopathic millionaire wrestling mentor in Foxcatcher, he can pick his own roles now. Why not a wiseacre stretchy superhero guy?

Andy Samberg

Here's a dark horse choice - funny, relatable, laid-back and confident. A Plastic Man for Generation Now. The kids like him, and he's on a TV show, which is exactly what Chris Pratt rode to StarLord fame. And with the glasses covering the eyes, you need a good smirk to do your acting for you, and Samberg definitely has the smirk.

Bonus: With his SNL digital shorts resume, Samberg could turn Plastic Man into a viral sensation.

Woozy Winks, sartorial genius.

Woozy Winks
Woozy Winks is a lovable schlub, the man whom nature cannot harm. Originally introduced as a bumbling criminal, he turned into a bumbling sidekick with horrible taste in shirts. He's mostly comic relief but also charmingly heroic.

Let's look at the contenders:Zach GalifianakisZach's a natural for this. He's a lovable doofus with a streak of evil. Cons: He'd have to shave the trademark beard. Also, he's recently lost weight, and it's hard to believe he'd either put it bock on or wear a fatsuit, so, unfortunately Zach is just a maybe.

Michael Cera

Is it just me, or is Hollywood in a golden age of cuddly bumblers? Galifinakis, Cera, Jonah Hill, and Seth Rogan could all be on this list. But Cera is an intriguing choice - he's been a bit quiet lately and a high-profile sidekick gig could be his ticket back to the big time. He could use his stuttery, shy-boy charm to great effect as a sweetheart bumbler who falls in love with the movie's femme fatale, and every other woman who gets screen time.

Paul Giamatti
Yup, Hollywood is definetly schlub-heavy these days. I also thought about throwing William H. Macy into the mix. Because the thing is, Woozy Winks is older, and absent-minded, maybe a heavy drinker. He needs a more mature presence, a guy who's played the schlub to great effect in the past. Someone who can bring the appropriate gravitas when things get crazy. So, maybe Paulie G is the right schlub for the job.

Love interest/femme fatale
The original Jack Cole Plastic Man never had much in the way of love interests - he was too busy fighting crime. But all that's going to change in my noir-ish reboot. Who can steal Plastic Man's heart? I've got a couple of ideas - Anna Paquin, who probably is sick of playing supernatural parts. Also, Sofia Vergara, who is a smart bombshell with a sexy accent, perfect for femme fatale-ing.

But this is a bold project that requires bold casting, and so my femme fatale is none other than...

Lena Dunham
We're going for outside-the-box on this whole thing. And why wouldn't Lena Dunham want to shake off her comico-serious voice-of-a-generation shackles and just have some fun as Gazelle van Gonder, the accursed heiress? I mean, look at that picture - she can totally do bombshell chic and turn it on its head at the same time.

I'm not sure if she's going to be a love interest or a diabolical femme fatale or both - I'm still working on my treatment - but Lena's going to smash all barriers in this, her breakaway, Oscar-bait performance.

I'll return with casting notes for the FBI chief (I'm thinking Angela Bassett) and the lead villain (maybe Morgan Freeman - totally going against type - as Marcel Mannequin? Just spitballing here, folks.) in my next post. Maybe. We also need a director, someone with vision and drive. If you have any ideas, jot them in the comments section below.

Friday, September 26, 2014

CastChorus: various fifth and sixth grade Korean public school students whose vocab consists mostly of phrases from their textbooks.

Jason: A greek warrior, prince of IolcusMedea: Sorceress and princess of ColchisCreon: King of Corinth

Part 1, Colchis:

Chorus:
Hello, how are you? I’m from Colchis.
Colchis is beautiful and special.
Colchis is famous for the Golden Fleece.

[Enter Medea]
This is Medea. She is very pretty.
She can do magic too.
But, she is very sad. Let’s listen!

Medea:
Oh, but that the world could know of my laments,
of the darkness in my soul. For it has
been said that tragedy should bite my heels
until time’s bitter end, that I should be
the ruin of great men through magicks and treason
most foul. But in truth I know not whether
my mind’s contents are fair or foul, for a life
of shelter tells me that should the test come,
I may not know it. Hark? What silver flash
upon the sea’s wine-stained horizon do I spy?

Chorus:
Look! It’s a boat! Such a big boat!
Who is it? Who is in the boat?
Medea does not know.
But, he is handsome.

ENTER Jason

Chorus:
That is Jason. He’s from Greece.
He’s very strong and kind. He wants to be King.
Let’s listen again!

Jason:
Long I have journeyed and hard, to this land
to seek and claim the fleece of gold foretold
as birthright destiny. But unseeming
of kindness is this land, and people here
shall surely prove awesome strange indeed.
But lo, what shape is that of woman shone
on distant parapet? Let us move close,
that providence may to me her hand reveal.

Chorus:
Medea likes Jason. She will help him.
She gives him many things.
She helps him get the golden fleece.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

John D. MacDonald was a very successful crime writer from the 1950's through the 1980's. He's best known now for the Travis McGee series, which starred an observant, cynical houseboat beach-bum in Lauderdale, Florida. MacDonald also wrote more hard-boiled fiction such as the novel The Executioners, which was twice filmed under the title Cape Fear. But Travis McGee, the blue-collar James Bond who took on cases where he can recover money and take half as the fee, was his most enduring creation.

His first McGee novel, The Deep Blue Goodbye, appeared in 1964, and while it seemed to ride on the coattails of James Bond's runaway success, there's a lot more to it than that. Strange as it seems, the McGee books were part of a thriving culture known as 'books for men,' in an age when men - mainstream, actual men - read books. Books on war, books about cowboys, books about private detectives. Pulp writers like Zane Grey pumped out western after western, and war titles were also numerous. Somewhere along the line, (I'd say about 1980) men stopped reading, and mysteries almost died out with them, until Sue Grafton and Sara Paretzky came along with female leads to save the genre. But that's another post.

Approaching the McGee novel's from a writer's perspective, there's an awful lot to learn from the success of one of America's great mid-list genre authors. So let's tear into one specific passage, looking at its key strengths and weaknesses, to answer the one question every author needs to ask: Why should my reader keep turning the page?

This passage occurs on the second page, after McGee introduces that he's on his boat, The Busted Flush, and the location is Lauderdale, Florida.

Chookie McCall was choreographing some fool thing. She had come over because I had the privacy and enough room. She had shoved the furniture out of the way, set up a couple of mirrors from the master stateroom, and set up her rackety little metronome. She wore a faded old rust-red leotard, mended with black thread in a couple of places. She had her black hair tied into a scarf.

She was working hard. She would go over a sequence time and time again, changing it a little each time, and when she was satisfied, she would hurry over to the table and make the proper notations on her clip board.

Dancers work as hard as coal miners used to work. She stomped and huffed and contorted her splendid and perfectly proportioned body. In spite of the air conditioning, she had filled the lounge with a faint sharp-sweet odor of large overheated girl. She was a pleasant distraction. In the lounge lights there was a highlighted gleam of perspiration on the long round legs and arms.

There's nothing fancy here, it's just clean simple prose, a bunch of facts with only a few moments of inspired writing. But for a moment, let's just soak in that first sentence: Chookie McCall was choreographing some fool thing. Here are my reactions to that sentence:

1. What kind of name is that? It's great, a mix of hard consonants ending with a soft l; it speaks of a mind tuned to whimsy and seriousness in equal measure.

2. We know Chookie's a dancer, but not just any dancer, she's one who does choreography. In 1964, most men would be happy to date a dancer, but Trav has met a woman who goes one better - she 'writes' dance.

3. From 'some fool thing' we know all sorts of things. First, we know Trav doesn't know or appreciate much about dance. Second, we know that even if he doesn't care about dance, he cares enough about Chookie to let her do her job on his houseboat.

That's pretty cool, that he can pack all that information into one short sentence.

Overall this scene is a great indication of the compassion Trav feels for women. As it turns out, Trav and Chookie aren't sleeping together. As the book develops, Trav's feelings for women separate into a strange mishmash of 60's paternal chauvinist condescension with a fig leaf of equality-of-sexes neo-enlightenment. This little bit here on the boat, where Trav is both patron and companion is a great bit of foreshadowing.

The paragraph continues with a bunch of things they tell you not to do in writing school, namely start four consecutive sentences with the pronoun She. There's a lot of descriptive tour-guiding with one stellar phrase (rackety little metronome), and I'm willing to let MacDonald break a workshop 101 rule because he's given me enough confidence from the opening of the book and his 'some fool thing' line that I move along the bridge of description till we get to the payoff: 'Dancers work as hard as coal miners used to work.' Here we get a sense of Trav's appreciation for Chookie and her career even if he knows nothing about it. He's a guy with some insights. In other words, he's a voice worth listening to.

Then he spends a few sentences of pure 'male gaze,' reducing Chookie to her body and its smells and the pleasure he gets from them. It's really kind of piggy, and justified only because she's a dancer, and dancers are a reduction of body to art, but it's still a male privilege thing, which, while offensive, plays to MacDonald's audience. Which is another measure of MacDonald's talent. You can reduce McGee to sexist pig, or you can try to rationalize it by saying MacDonald created actual empowered women - and he does have a lot of strong female characters - but - and this is not a small point - you still trust McGee as a narrator. McGee is self-aware, confident, and reliable. This goes a long way in securing the trust of a reader.

You may think MacDonald wasn't smart enough to think through all these issues of gender and patrician attitudes, but later passages, where McGee thinks of himself as a modern knight errant, saving damsels and feeling guilty for bedding the women he saves, would prove you wrong. These are exactly the kinds of things writers think about, and when he was on, MacDonald was in tune with everything he was doing, and with his core audience.

And so, let's reduce everything to one rule: Find your audience, and give them a reason to keep turning the pages. Everything after that is gravy.